Requirements

• OBS
• obs-websocket

In macOS you may install the requirements with Homebrew:

$ brew install obs obs-websocket

Installation

Option 1: Download the Executable

https://github.com/leafac/obs-cli/releases/latest

Option 2: Use npm

For this option you must have Node.js installed. In macOS you may install it with Homebrew:

$ brew install node

You may install obs-cli implicitly on first use by relying on npx, which comes with Node.js, for example:

$ npx obs-cli StartRecording

Or you may wish to avoid the npx prefix with an explicit global installation of obs-cli through npm, which also comes with Node.js:

$ npm install --global obs-cli

Now you may simply run, for example:

$ obs-cli StartRecording

Finally, you may wish to install obs-cli on a project managed by npm:

$ npm install obs-cli

Usage

Usage: obs-cli [options] <request[=arguments]...>

Remote control OBS from the command line.

Arguments:
  request[=arguments]        a request name (for example, ‘GetRecordingFolder’), optionally followed by arguments (for example, ‘SetRecordingFolder='{ "rec-folder":
                             "/tmp/" }'’) (see https://github.com/Palakis/obs-websocket/blob/4.x-current/docs/generated/protocol.md for the complete list of requests
                             and their arguments)

Options:
  -a, --address <address>    the address to the machine in which OBS is running and the port configured in OBS under Tools > WebSockets Server Settings (default:
                             "localhost:4444")
  -p, --password <password>  the password configured in OBS under Tools > WebSockets Server Settings
  -f, --field <field>        project a field out of the OBS response, for example, given an OBS response of ‘[{ ..., "streaming": false, ...}]’ and a <field> of
                             ‘0.streaming’, obs-cli outputs just ‘false’; this is a convenience for applications that need only one part of the response
  -V, --version              output the version number
  -h, --help                 display help for command

For example:

$ npx obs-cli GetRecordingFolder
[
  {
    "message-id": "1",
    "rec-folder": "/Users/leafac/Videos",
    "status": "ok",
    "messageId": "1",
    "recFolder": "/Users/leafac/Videos"
  }
]

$ npx obs-cli --field 0.rec-folder GetRecordingFolder
/Users/leafac/Videos

$ npx obs-cli SetRecordingFolder='{ "rec-folder": "/tmp/" }'
[
  {
    "message-id": "1",
    "status": "ok",
    "messageId": "1"
  }
]

$ npx obs-cli GetRecordingFolder SetRecordingFolder='{ "rec-folder": "/Users/leafac/Videos" }' GetRecordingFolder
[
  {
    "message-id": "1",
    "rec-folder": "/tmp/",
    "status": "ok",
    "messageId": "1",
    "recFolder": "/tmp/"
  },
  {
    "message-id": "2",
    "status": "ok",
    "messageId": "2"
  },
  {
    "message-id": "3",
    "rec-folder": "/Users/leafac/Videos",
    "status": "ok",
    "messageId": "3",
    "recFolder": "/Users/leafac/Videos"
  }
]

obs-cli is a thin wrapper around obs-websocket-js, which in turn is a wrapper around obs-websocket. Read the documentations for those projects to learn more about what you can do with obs-cli. In particular, here’s the list of possible requests.

obs-cli is similar in spirit (and equal in name) to this other project. The main differences are: 1. It’s written in Node.js instead of Go; and 2. It supports authentication and everything else that obs-websocket provides, while that other project, judging by its documentation, seems to support only a few kinds of requests.